COMMENT

...They want to gut the Endangered Species Act," says Andy Kerr, conservation director of the Oregon Natural Resources Council...

...But we sense that these controversies are, for the most part, the exertions of wheezing politicians frantically reaching for the brass ring and zealous law-enforcers polishing their image as champions of prim propriety...

...the amendments that deal with the rights of individuals accused of crime assume that, in a just society, it is better for a dozen—or a hundred or a thousand—guilty parties to go free than for one innocent person to be convicted...

...Those Palestinians (and other Arabs) who have counseled caution and patience find themselves under more and more pressure from those who argue that violence is the only course likely to produce a just settlement...

...The Owl and the Hoots There are only about 3,000 pairs of northern spotted owls in the United States...

...We can be especially sympathetic to the children, victims of alleged abuse, who will henceforth be permitted to testify on videotape without coming into the courtroom and speaking in the presence of the accused abuser...

...Biased and bland, the bulk of the PBS's programming caters to the rich...

...As the Boston book-banners demonstrated a couple of generations ago, a well-publicized attempt at censorship is a sure-fire ticket to commercial success...

...If U.S...

...The first, by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), documents the biases of the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour...

...What is needed is an end to U.S...

...PBS and the American Worker," a report by the City University of New York Committee for Cultural Studies, found that "programming about workers makes up less than one-half of 1 per cent of total PBS prime-time programming offerings, and much of that minuscule amount is about British rather than American workers...

...Writing for the majority in the Ohio case, Justice Anthony Kennedy insisted parents will normally try to give "compassionate and mature" advice to their pregnant minor daughters...

...Fortunately, environmentalists around the country are coming up with more positive responses, which may yet prevail...

...Soon there may be fewer...

...Supreme Court...

...Chip away one piece of the Sixth Amendment and the next chip will be easier to loosen...

...The study notes that at least three shows are devoted to business: Wall Street Week, Nightly Business Report, and Adam Smith's Money World...

...In fact, according to the study, American workers received only twenty minutes of coverage per month on PBS...

...Anyone who becomes pregnant should have that right, without first having to get through the maze the Court has just constructed...

...It still does to many of us, but not, apparently, to the U.S...

...guests were white and 87 per cent were male...

...Under the parental-notification laws, minor women can plead in court for permission to have abortions without telling their parents...

...actions reinforce those policies...

...Programs devoted to the elite used up nearly ten times more PBS prime-time programming than programs devoted to workers.' —from the study, 'PBS and the American Worker...

...I Love Spotted Owl—For Lunch reads a popular bumper sticker in the Northwest...

...To refer to the region as a tinder box is a cliche, but recent developments make it advisable to pay serious attention to a possible eruption of open warfare between Israel and the Arab states...

...The spotted-owl issue is a litmus test for our society...

...Afriend who pays more attention than we do to the diversions and distractions of major-party politics predicts, gloomily, that this fall's Congressional campaigns will plumb new depths of cheap-shot demagoguery...

...But it typically identifies them simply as "experts" or former Government officials, instead of telling the viewer these "experts" have a particular political slant...

...The spotted owl issue is one of the hottest controversies in the Pacific Northwest, since by some estimates preserving the habitat of the owl will cost 28,000 timber-industry jobs in the next ten years...

...Much of the owl's habitat falls on U.S...

...Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote the opinion for the five-to-four majority in a Maryland case involving the operator of a day-care center, convicted of sexual abuse of a six-year-old girl who testified via one-way closed-circuit television...

...What's worse, the program is less-than-candid when it comes to identifying its guests...

...The recent suicide raid on an Israeli beach by Palestinian guerrillas is only a small foretaste of the desperate and destructive tactics likely to be deployed as frustration mounts...

...K By its coy on-again-off-again relationship with the Palestine Liberation Organization, the United States has given aid and comfort to the Israeli government in its intransigent refusal to "negotiate with terrorists" and to determine, unilaterally, who may and may not speak for the Palestinian people in any negotiations...

...reverse] the judgment of conviction.' —Justice Antonin Scalia, in dissent sive the argument of anti-abortion activists that since minors need parental consent or notification for most other medical decisions, abortion should be no exception...

...The United States has a significant role to play in averting the catastrophe of another Middle East war—not by intervening in the region, but by ending decades of intervention...

...That goes to show the bypass is just another hurdle for the woman...

...Government adopts an environmentally sound economic strategy, they will be...

...If U.S...

...We believe he may be mistaken...

...policies that perpetuate an unjust and dangerous status quo—a status quo likely to lead to war...

...Fear of parental disappointment, disapproval, rejection, and violence will likely only further isolate pregnant young women, and will drive more to seek illegal abortions or commit suicide...

...Government policies...

...There is nothing public about it except the taxpayers' subsidy...

...There would be a surge of popular support for peace initiatives...

...Media references to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir as a "moderate" in that government show how far to the right Israeli politics have tilted...

...No doubt exists (except in the official rhetoric emanating from Jerusalem) that Israel possesses nuclear weapons...

...Parental-notification laws are simply the latest attacks on women's rights to control their own bodies, each cloaked as a separate issue and justified with a new excuse...

...And he's convinced that a right-wing crusade against flag burning, filthy photos, and raunchy song lyrics will win big at the polls...

...Virtually Constitutional The Bill of Rights seemed like a good idea when it took effect two centuries ago...

...weapons protecting Saudi Arabia—and vice versa...

...military and economic aid to Israel, to the tune of some $3 billion a year, allows that nation to remain on a permanent war footing while sustaining a standard of living that entails few sacrifices for Israeli citizens...

...MacNeil/Lehrer also relies on right-wing think tanks to supply guests...

...But this time, the public—most of it, at least— isn't buying...

...If that is true, why are so many young women terrified of telling their parents...

...Members of Congress who expected (and hoped) to be inundated in demands for a constitutional ban on flag-burning were disappointed...

...One other obvious sign of bias: "PBS offers prime-time weekly programming about business and investing but does not offer any comparable programming about workers or labor...

...They find persua'Construction will be continued, in accordance with government policy, in all parts of the land of Israel.' —Housing Minister Ariel Sharon, promising to continue building Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories 'The Court has convincingly proved that the Maryland procedure serves a valid interest, and gives the defendant virtually everything the confrontation clause guarantees (everything, that is, except confrontation...

...For MacNeil/Lehrer, 90 per cent of its U.S...

...Who will be next to elicit O'Connor's sympathy...

...It was, in fact, the lack of constituent fervor on this issue that gave a few—but enough—members of Congress the stomach to stand up for the Bill of Rights...

...assistance were suspended or curtailed, the effect on Israel's economy—and on its politics—would be profound...

...We can be sympathetic...

...In 1967, the Carnegie Commission report on public television said it should "provide a voice for groups in the community that may otherwise be unheard...

...Traumatized rape victims...

...The Bush Administration, after declaring the owl a threatened species, has refused to take the action necessary to preserve the owl's habitat—the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest...

...But anti-abortion polemicists can't have it both ways—they can't argue that for minors, abortion is merely a "medical decision" requiring customary parental involvement, while for adults, abortion is not a private decision made by a woman and her doctor, but murder...

...If Washington believes in the peaceful intentions of its Israeli ally, against what "threat" are U.S...

...Jobs and owls do not need to be enemies, but until the U.S...

...A Tortuous Maze According to a recent poll, some 80 per cent of Americans—including many who otherwise support abortion rights—favor restrictions on teen-aged women's rights to abortion...

...Witnesses to murder...

...To be sure, we've heard and seen the sound and fury...

...The NewsHour guest list reads like the membership rolls of the Lions Club...

...And even the vendetta directed at the National Endowment for the Arts seems to have had the salubrious effect of rallying its friends and supporters...

...While Washington professes concern about Israel's settlement policies in the West Bank, U.S...

...The region's chronic instability permits of no assumption that such means of mass-annihilation will be kept under control...

...I am persuaded, therefore, that the Maryland procedure is virtually constitutional...

...But instead of protecting the forests and the owls, the Government has been decimating them...

...For good or bad," he wrote in dissent, "the Sixth Amendment requires confrontation, and we are not at liberty to ignore it...

...Voices have been raised in the Arab world as well as in Israel for the imposition of a peace settlement by the United States—but imposition is never the road to peace...

...A cleaned-up version isn't doing nearly as well...

...By pitting them against each other, the Government and the timber industry have played to ugliness and prejudice...

...The Right, deprived by history of the Red bugaboo it so effectively exploited for the last four decades, is scrambling for new villains around which to construct a revised politics of fear...

...We've noted the zeal displayed by Florida authorities in persecuting the rap group 2 Live Crew and the continuing uproar over Robert Mapplethorpe's photos and other works of art deemed unsuitable for public funding or display...

...The BS in PBS Public television is a misnomer...

...The idea is to protect the rights of the individual...

...Yet, the Supreme Court bought the anti-abortionists' argument when it upheld Minnesota and Ohio parental-notification statutes in June...

...Another factor contributing to the possibility of war is an across-the-board escalation of the Middle East arms race...

...Even leading conservative commentators, among them William Safire and James Jackson Kilpatrick, denounced the flag flim-flam...

...On the cultural front, the legal actions against 2 Live Crew and its decidedly obnoxious lyrics have, unsurprisingly, brought booming record sales to the group's latest and most offensive album...

...It ignores the voices and concerns of working Americans, and (aside from Bill Moyers's programs) it slights critics of U.S...

...You can't be plainer than that...

...Do we protect the environment and all the species that depend on it...

...One of those developments is the installation of a hard-line Israeli government—a government in which small, fanatical religious parties play a pivotal role...

...The Bush Administration's answer, evidently, is no to both questions...

...Or it did until this summer, when the Court ruled that exceptions can be made...

...If war should come, the United Strates would have to bear major responsibility for the tragedy...

...support has fueled the Middle East arms race, providing advanced weaponry to the Arab nations as well as Israel and thus intensifying the region's instability...

...Its Middle East policy under every Administration back to Harry Truman's has served to exacerbate tensions and perpetuate injustice...

...Toward that end, the Sixth Amendment guarantees that "the accused shall enjoy the right...

...11 By shutting its own doors to Jews emigrating from the Soviet Union, the United States has, in effect, compelled them to settle (often reluctantly) in Israel, where they become pawns in the government's campaign to annex the Occupied Territories...

...And the Administration is trying to amend the Endangered Species Act with some typically Republican cost-benefit analysis: balancing the value of preserving a species against the economic costs of the necessary conservation measures...

...Two recent studies underscore the inadequacies of public television...

...Witnesses and victims may be so frightened of defendants that they refuse to testify, making valid cases fall apart...

...Why are they not balanced with appearances from progressive think tanks like the Institute for Policy Studies or the World Policy Institute...

...The NewsHour often invites such right-wingers as Pat Buchanan, Robert Bork, William Hyland, and Elliot Abrams to present their views...

...No such voice is raised on "public" television...

...That means face-to-face testimony in open court...

...MacNeil/Lehrer's guest list represents an extremely narrow segment of the political and social spectrum," the FAIR report notes...

...Land of the Scared...

...And can we construct an economy that assures people decent jobs so they don't need to live lives of quiet desperation or noisy hatred...

...We're mindful that while the flag-burning amendment favored by President Bush failed to achieve the requisite two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate, it did win a clear majority in each chamber...

...No show offered by PBS concerns itself with the lives and interests of workers...

...Police informers who wish to remain anonymous...

...But the principal reason for the rising level of danger in the Middle East is the persistent refusal of Israel to come to terms with the fact that Palestinians demand—and deserve—a state of their own in the territories Israel has occupied since the 1967 war...

...In the six-month period of the study, the American Enterprise Institute furnished guests six times and the Center for Strategic and International Studies eight times...

...Since such a law went into effect in Minnesota, judges have denied abortions in only nine of some 3,500judicial bypass requests...

...FAIR asks...

...It is a rare day when we agree wholeheartedly with Justice Antonin Scalia, but this is one of those days...

...You can't scare all of the people all of the time...

...Okay...

...The other study covered PBS's prime-time offerings in 1988 and 1989...

...Since it is not, however, actually constitutional, I would...

...He is convinced that conservative office-seekers (and office-holders) will aim their thirty-second spots at those few candidates who have had the temerity to defend the Bill of Rights out loud...

...It appears equally clear that Iraq (and, perhaps, other Arab states) can mount an effective chemical-warfare attack...

...Confrontation, he continued, is "unqualifiedly guaranteed...

...Most of the public, frankly, doesn't seem to give a damn...

...If Massive U.S...

...Forest Service land...

...as Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in his Ohio dissent, the laws merely create "a tortuous maze" for young women confronting unwanted pregnancy...

...The Sixth Amendment often causes problems for prosecutors...

...Roe v. Wade established the right to abortion...

...to be confronted with the witnesses against him...

...There was no great outpouring, except from such predictable quarters as the patriotic orders and veterans' lodges...

...If overheated rhetoric alone had sufficed to overturn the Supreme Court's affirmation of flag-burning as a protected form of protest, the First Amendment would certainly have been mutilated by now...